Why Trump vs. Warren in 2020 Would Prove America Is in Decline ( a perfect example of the intersection between media/political/bureaucratic elitism!)

via National Interest.

The steady adoption of a primary system to select party nominees in the 1970s and 1980s was something that weakened the leverage of party bosses in so-called smoke-filled rooms and played to the most partisan emotions of each major party. For decades the bosses had selected safe, moderate candidates: not always inspiring but usually responsible. It was the bosses who essentially gave us Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and so on. Eisenhower was scouted by the bosses of the Republican party while he was still in uniform. The system we have today might never have selected him. Though an exceptional analyst, organization man, and war hero, Ike wasn’t especially charismatic. Neither was he an especially compelling speaker or photogenic.

Smoke-filled rooms may sound squalid, but they fulfilled the spirit of the Founders of the American Revolution, specifically James Madison, who preferred a republic; not a democracy. In a republic, the masses rule only indirectly, through an elite that they can change every few years. Democracy means more direct rule, given to rage and passions, nowadays amplified by social media. Here is where the filter of the party bosses and the discipline of the print-and-typewriter age – which encouraged complex, analytical thinking from media organs dedicated to centrist objectivity – conveniently merged to guide us through the Cold War and keep us a republic.

Now think of our post–Cold War presidents chosen under different circumstances: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Compare them against Truman’s shepherding of the Marshall Plan; of Eisenhower’s avoidance of a hot war with China and the Soviet Union, despite much of the advice he was getting; of Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis; of Johnson’s Civil Rights Bill; of the elder Bush’s elegant restraint in the face of Soviet collapse and respect for limits in the case of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and you’ll see what I mean. Of course, President Lyndon Johnson’s tragic decisions on Vietnam were an exception – and I’ll get to that.

Had the party bosses been in charge of the 2016 nominating process, and were the print-and-typewriter age still regnant, Governor Jeb Bush would likely be president, having narrowly defeated Senator Hillary Clinton, a candidate with more negatives than himself. He would have surrounded himself with first-rate foreign policy advisers from the Republican establishment: Richard Haass, Robert Zoellick, Meghan O’Sullivan, and so forth. He would have governed more like his father than his brother. Things would be so dull. So low energy! Yet, America, its alliances, and its posture in the world would be infinitely sturdier and wiser. Trump is where direct, mass democracy and the wonders of the digital-video age have led us. And these same factors may yet offer a Democratic opponent who threatens an economic and social upheaval to match Trump’s upheaval in manners and decency. The Founders would be horrified of how we have in spirit, stopped being a republic and have become a democracy. Someone like Jeb Bush was meant to govern the former.

Here 

Do you see what this guy is selling?

He has actually written an article that worships at the feet of the elite.  Be it political, media or even the bureaucracy!

I'm stunned.

A call for the "elite" to moderate (actually control) the American electoral process?

My theory?

The US is no longer a democracy (if it ever was) nor is it a republic.  It is now a hybrid system drifting between being a bureaucracy, oligarchy, and plutocracy (based on this webpage).

Which all leads me to this.

The impeachment is all about one thing.  The bureaucracy/oligarchy/plutocracy all striking back at a President they don't like (I'm not fond of but I see no better options at the moment).  Nazi filled Ukraine is not worth all this anguish.